498 



CONCLUSIVE OBSERVATIONS. 



CHAP. XXVI. 



Conclusive Observations. 



The great disparity between the actual condition of the Brazil and that which, 

 from its pure climate, fertile soil, numerous rivers, and immense extent, it is 

 capable of attaining, is the main circumstance that will be suggested to the 

 reader by the perusal of the foregoing pages. The climate is indeed generally 

 so salubrious that diseases are as rare as in any part of the globe, much less as 

 fatal as they are often found to be in similar latitudes. In a region so extensive 

 the climates are necessarily various, but, with the exception of some of the pan- 

 tanos, or morasses, and stagnant waters remaining after inundations, the country 

 is for the main part exceedingly wholesome ; and, as far as my own informa- 

 tion and observation has extended, the provinces immediately bordering upon 

 the equator, are equally, if not more healthful than many nearer the tropical 

 line. The soil is so fertile that a much less portion of culture is requisite for 

 its abundant production than is found necessary for most other countries of the 

 world, and is, indeed, to a very large extent, almost spontaneously productive. 



The facilities are incalculable which it might supply to commerce, and 

 towards increasing and aggrandizing its people from the multitudinous rivers 

 that pour beauty, comfort, and health, into its extensive tract. The advan- 

 tages already mentioned, with its diversified aspect, its champaign and its 

 hilly surface, its noble mountains and woods, where sport a great variety of 

 beautiful and useful animals, its groves of numerous kinds of fruit, and of bal- 

 samic and spice trees, peopled with birds of luxuriant plumage or of alimen- 

 tary utility, would, with the addition of that agricultural and commercial 

 improvement of which it is so immensely susceptible, and the introduction of 

 literature, science, and art, and the consequent prevalence of a social, liberal, 

 and hospitable feeling, advance it to a state of beauty, prosperity, and happiness 

 not to be surpassed by any other portions of the globe, and equalled but by few. 



It is obvious that at present these numerous provinces, each of which might, 

 when thus improved, constitute a kingdom, are mainly in a primeval state, and 

 hitherto the religious bigotry, the unlettered ignorance, the unsocial manners, 

 the commercial defects, the narrow, civil, and ecclesiastical polity have for 

 centuries checked the natural growth of every thing that adorns and gives 

 power to an empire. 



